THE PREPARATION OF PROGRAMS FOR AN ELECTRONIC DIGITAL COMPUTER

Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley Press, Inc, 1951. Very good plus.. First edition, important association copy of this early work in computer programming, owned and annotated by Mary Lee Woods, noted computer scientist and programmer (and mother of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee). This book contains programming instructions for the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), an early British computer built by author Wilkes and colleagues at the University of Cambridge. Mary Lee Woods (later Berners-Lee), to whom this copy belonged, was a member of the working group responsible for developing the Ferranti Mark 1, aka the Manchester Electronic Computer: the first commercially available digital computer, completed and delivered a year ahead of the U.S.-developed UNIVAC I.

In 1951, the year of this text's publication, Woods returned from a disappointing Australian astrophysics fellowship and was swiftly recruited by Ferranti's team in Manchester, though she had never programmed before (a "significant proportion of the programmer recruits were female mathematics graduates from universities in the south-east of England," writes Simon Lavington). Known as the first book on computer programming, and proportionately influential, THE PREPARATION OF PROGRAMS was likely a major part of Woods's initial training; her neat annotations record her own additions, substitutions, and adjustments to the sample subroutines provided. In 1952, Woods led an effort to secure an official policy guaranteeing pay equality for male and female programmers and - remarkably - succeeded, though women programmers continued to struggle for equal time on the much-in-demand machine, shared with university users. In an interview years later, she recalled: "You'd be in a very deep sleep, and to be woken up - although you were dying to get on to the computer-to be woken up in the middle of the night was not very good, when your turn came! However, it was worth it. You had black coffee, and had to go on the computer." A remarkable association copy, capturing an early moment in the history of computer programming. 9'' x 6''. Original brown cloth with gilt spine lettering. Illustrated with two black and white plates. 167, [3] pages. Pencil to front free endpaper with owner's signature of "M.L. Woods" in block capitals; pencil note to rear endpaper; occasional neat and unobtrusive pencil annotations throughout. Seller's label from Scientific Computing Service Limited of London neatly mounted to title page. Spine sunned; lettering faded. Moderate bumping and edgewear.